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MIOOCOfY KSOIUTION TIST CHAIT
(ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No, 2|
1.0 !fis 1^
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1.6
A APPLIED IIVMGE
s^^;' H^-f i:
THE UNIVERSITY IN
WAR AND PEACE
AN ADDRESS
Delivered at the Convocation of the
University of Manitoba
MAY 12, 1916
MAURICE HUTTON, M.A., LL.D.
Prindpal of University College
University o£ Toronto
-* :i.<f,'^^
it-V
^ .^.c
CiPe'^^/
/J
THE UNIVERSITY IN WAR
AND PEACE
The present year is scarcely an auspicious occasion for
the convocation of ;i University. Our world has fallen to
pieces, the academic world most of all. The Divine Irony,
which to the imagination of ancient Greece, always chooses
the hour when man is most confident of his peace and
happiness, for his overthrow and his banishment from his
fool's paradise, selected the summer of 1914. when Canada's
century as we call it,— in Germany they call it Germany's
century— was well begun, when Peace Societies and Inter-
national Polity Clubs were in full swing on this continent,
when, even in conservative Great Britain, responsible
statesmen were protesting that no European war could
again deflect Great Britain's peaceful course of social
betterment, when every man sensitive to the American
spirit— whether he kicked against its pricks or frankly
welcomed them— felt in his bones that soldiering was not
merely a lost art on this continent, but a buried bogey, that
war was not merely dead but damned,— the Divine Irony
selected that summer to show man how little he knows of
himself or of his world. And in less than a fortnight
Canada's century was baptised, but in blood: and the
students of this University and of all Canadian Univer-
sities, the young men who best express the very essence
of Canadianism and Americanism, who are, so to speak,
very Canada of very Canada, its natural voice, begotten
no* made, were enlisting for service over seas, and some
already, finding themselves in Europe on their holidays,
had enlisted and had forsworn all holidays: in some cases
for ever.
Nine months of war passed and the University con-
vocations of 1915 came round with khaki for academic
gowns and with degrees in absentia lo men in the trenches:
men alreacly ptTliaps sotm-wluil intliffcrcnt to the frills and
luxuries cf eiliu':uicm ;inil of Ans Courses, to the fris'olous
or femir.ine vantLies of civilization: to men, some of whom
hail >;raihiateil alreaily by a man's rloath. lieyond the
riaih of aeademic baubles.
Vulnera perpessus contraria vtrius in hoslem.
And now a .iecond war-convocation has come round
ami the khaki is more conspicuous than ever, and yet less
conspicuous to the eyes than in fac. because it lias ab-
sorljcd many of the ^TaduatinK class and taken them away
alreaily. And the Universities of Cana.la an frankly
confronting a session next autumn which will be like
the sessions of Oxford and Canibridi;e and Aberdecr a
session when they will become almost in fact though not
in name, for the time being, women's colle^;es.
What is to be said then at such an abnormal Convoca-
tion: at a Convocation which seems to postpone almost
unconsciously all academic c(jntrov ersies to a moie con-
venient season, which seems lo adjourn for another year
or two years all the platitudes and oeatitudes of Uni'-ersity
life and artificial civilization: wliich seems to suHjjest only
one thought, "what is the use of thought and learning, of
learned men or students, at an hour like Ms when this
and every land almost shouts aloi.d for the only three things
necessary to its salvation, soldiers, mechanics and farmers:
men to fight, men to prepare muail'ons for the fighters,
men to grow food for the munition makers and the fighters"?
What is a University at the moment but a foul's paradise
or an anchorite's cell, an artificial cloister of the sheltered
life, an exotic orchid of a hot-house civilization?
Has not the war in fact brought with it a return to human
nature in all its shape., .and forms: a return to patriotism
in place of cosmopolitanism: a return to rougft living and
hardships in place of luxury: a return to natural instincts
in place of conventional prudence ;ind artificial worldli-
ness? (Think for u moment of all those youthful war-
brides and bridegrooms, and compare their b.appy f:iith
with ttir raver, meaner ..lul more mercenary marriages (if
the ilays of nir jieaee and imr ma'erialis.n.) The war has
lir(iuj;hl \vi-,fi it a return even to faith yet more audacious, in
place of the frank utililu; ';iI,^; secularism of two years a^-ii:
a return, a revival, of .,eri.;us religion. Yes, and oven
sometimes in its extremer forms, even to the re-awakening
of the lonj; dormant passion in man's heart for miracle and
for legend, for tjhostly knights and saintly .naids or, horse-
h:'ck aIllle.•lrin^; in the battle line, ,is of ol I liy the hanks
of Lake Ke^illus, hy the sca-shorc of .M.ir.i, hon; fl^;ures of
St. George and St. Joan and St. Michael, the iiatron Saints
(jf England, of France, and of Russia. The war in fact
has made all things new aj;ain an<l has made natural a^ain
the things which materialism and commercialism had
choked or smothered. And human n.iture has returned
upon itself, has set up a^ain the old primitive standards of
the nnspciled races, the virtues of love and loyalty and
couraje. The world is impatient fcr the time of books
and learninK and intellect, in the supreme need of less
self-culture and more self-sacrifice.
Books and learnin};, self -culture and rationalism seem now
to smack Germany where indeed were their temples
and their , nests. Judged by their latest fruit, these things
seem as nothing or less thai nothing. They seem for the
moment almost a part of German "frightfulness." If
rationalism is producing a reaction towards religion, or
even towards irrational superstition, we owe it. as we owe
our united Empire and our old-new ^■irtues, (though we
need pay no thanks therefor for the gifts were unintended
by the giver) to that same Germany, which has achieved
so much she never dreamed of and so '.Me of all she schemed.
The war seems a turning away from University life and all
sheltered life back to human nature.
Yes, gentlemen, bv the dyer's hand is subdued to what
it wonts in and the academic soohist or philosopher who
has spent lis life in books and dreams and theories, cannot
himself in the later reaches of the tranquil river of his
peaceful life become soldier or mechanic or even farmer.
Ill' can only ^o nn r.pinmnn theories .imi quoting his undent
saws am! modern instance;- Yes, if it Ixj only to kill time
and soothe impatience and make the delay seem shortei,
till he can get the evening papers and the next news from
the front.
Tho real life of Canada, the real life of all of us almost
in this hall is at the front to-day: the heart and soul are
there and after that the body perhaps ou^ht hardly to count.
And yet we have to carry on somehow: best if we are drill-
ing, second best if we are making munitions, third best if
we arc raisinp food. But if we can do none of these thinRS.
still carry on, though it he only in the old vain way of
speculating.; and theorising;.
And perhaps under these conditions a theorist can find
after all some uses in our Universities and some defence of
them, even in these years of stern realities and of war:
even in these years which mark the universal breakdown of
our greatest illusion — Peace.
What has been said of our Universities in the old days
before the war? This often, that being British Univer-
sities and not German nor French, nor even American,
(which are often quasi-German) that they held learning
too low and thought too much of mere character and morale:
that their students — though healthy and wholesome in
mind as well as body, honest, that is, and temperate and
manly and full of a certain curious and British spirit of
fair-play, derived from their indulgence in athletics — yet,
like the rest of their nation and of the Mother-nation, took
too little account of learning and of science: acquired
little or nothing of the faculty of taking pains, which is
the genius of this world of men and of its supermen, the
Germans, (as even French proverbs and British transla-
tions thereof have testified) : that they were instead infected
by the license of their political systems, unwilling to submit
to discipline and organization: that they were too much
given to free speech and free thought, too jealous of their
liberty and their initiative: poor machinery in short, and
second-rate instruments, round pegs in square holes and
squ.iri' jii'tjs in rouTi.l liolcs, |inilitir iif fridion ami j:irrinx:
th.it ihi'V wore a mirroiusm of thrir imn ileiiKKTatic iii-
stitulions, which oinstiuiic imly a^ the Kict'ohin.in says
— an aputhfosis of inc<)Tnpi'tL'n(t',
Prnhahly it was all true t-nou^jh atul >-ct •• is sdnu-thin^
i)n the DthiT siilf. it k'X's simu' way In strike .. Iialanco ami
ri-ilri'ss the risini; scale, tliat when cjur Knipire ni'eilcd
soldiers, at least its st\ulcnts started with the natural
instincts of yuunj; men. Nature ai' ' instinct in such a
case c;in ciivii a wilderness oi ijjii: ,ance ahcmt ancient
learninj;, and even some dclkieiuies in modern science.
And it is something mure on the sam? side that the student
should have become a vduntary soldier; and it is some-
thinK yet more that ha ^ become a soldier he should
still retain some initiative and some self reliance with
which to temper a soldier's automatic discipline and his
somewhat mechanical obedience to routine.
The record of our Universities with their enlistments,
ten thousand from Oxford, ten thousan from Cambridt'e,
two thousand five hundred from our o' ml very youthful
University of Toronto, numbers in pr-.portion, or perhaps
in proportion even greater, from the infant Universities
of Manitoba and the West, this record makes it easier for
us to talk to-day to our critics or enemies in the Rate, ■ n
they scot! at the low standards of British IcaminR.
One cannot well have it both ways perhaps ; cannot Rivt cne
heart and soul to learning and yet be sure of retaining
the man's wholesome instincts. The men of science of
Great Britain are complaining that the British Govern-
ment with its contempt for learning will not listen to its
great chemists, misunderstands the question of cotton and
contraband, does not appreciate the scientific side of a
blockade. But these things after all presumably can be
learned, if slowly, yet learned ; they are of the letter of the
law, not of its spirit. If the spirit of the nation and of its
Universities were not sound, nothing would avail and no
science would save.
But has not the enemy, objects the critic, both letter
8
and spirit- both science and manly instinct? In a way
indeed he lias, but so as to spoil both : a science wholly mat-
erialized to politics and national egotism : a manlv instinct
wholly obsessei! with the ambition, manly enough, super-
manly it may be, but unchastencd and arrogant, ungener-
ous and unprincipled, to dominate the world. The ancient
Germany which ruled the air (but not with Zeppelins in
those days), which inspired men's souls and brains like
ancient Greece at her best, Icavin),' to France and Great
Britaii. to turn men into mere soldiers or sailors, the ancier.t
Germany is turned upside down and is become a land,
unlike ancient Greece in everything now, e.Ncept in its
belated paganism and its out-of-date indifference to pledges
and truth speaking. What in an ancient Greek— when
Greek-like he broke his pledge— seems but a choleric word
becomes flat blasphemy from Christian Germany : blasphemy
so rial that the world is asking if it really is in any sense
Christian Germany at all: or is it not rather— as certain of
its own prophets have prophesied with boasting— the old
Germany still of Odin, never given over except upon the
surface to the new-fangled religion of Ch.istianity, but
true still to the old religion of valour, to the Odin who is
older and greater than the Christian's God, to the Odin
whom her forefathers worshipped before the days when
the Roman Empire imported into Germany a veneer of
the new religion of Christ'
At best, Germany seems to be a land of the Old Testa-
ment and not of the New: and still so unfamiliar with the
New and so unsympathetic towards it, that when she saw
a nation like Great Britain and France, and a continent
like Amenca, given u|) to peace, she could discern only the
sordid side of peace and supposed that these races' had
become decadent, until the Marne and Verdun, until Mons
and Ypres and St, Julien have suggested at last, it may be,
a few unwilling doubts and unwelcome difficulties.
Can a nation really be at once pacific and humanitarian
towards the world and yet resolute to defend its rights
and the nghts of others? Is it really possible to retaiti
9
the virtues of the (11,1 Testament, the primary virtues of
man, self-reliance and will and courage, and yet fulfil
the Old with the New Testament by Kraftinn on' to these
pnmary virtues the secon<lary virtues of the New Testa-
ment and of the Christian:- Is it reallv true-that ironical
fancy of the ,)aKan Plato— that a true state can really
nse to the stature of a wcUbred watch dos;- fearless even to
aggressiveness towards intruders, yet loyal and lov^nR to
his master and sympathetic and intelligent to his master's
household and his master's friends? Can a state really
urate the manliness of Sparta~as Pericles and Plato wanted
to do— with the humanity, intelligence and peacefulness
of Athens?
I am slipping you perceive into the ancient threadbare
topics of University Convocations, into the old classical
references to Athens, and yet I am not leaving, I hope the
topic which concerns us all to-day, the shivering scales
wherein the fortunes of the worid hang balanced and have
hung for twenty-one anxious months. The ancient thread-
Dare topics have come to life again-like all else that is
real in life— since the war: the war which is Athens and
Sparta fighting their old battles of long ago once again.
And that is the defence, at bottom, for the study of the
humanities in a University. You want to know first—
before studying extinct animals, the ichthyosaurus and
the plesiosaurus, before speculating on centaurs and
'■himicras and the scientific truths that may lie behind
these legends— what sort of a monster vou are yourself
as Socrates used to say. And until you have made some
sort of pr.-ress in the study of humanity and yourself
have begun in some slight fashion to know yourself, the
other sciences of paleontology and zoology can conven-
iently wait, even though they be not so far' divorced from
the study of humanity, as Socrates hastily supirosed. He
would not interest himself in the minotaur of Crete but
the modern Greek scholar has dug up the minotaur in
Crete and has showed us that the fabulous monster and
his exploits had a very human and a real and historical
10
butchered to make a Cretan holiday."
If a man is wholesomely obiective anH r«,..
and knows as little of himself, as most of us wh n" '
humamt,es; for already nature has given hL o Ver h
objective and impersonal ^ ''"'*'"'■ '^°'^
huitis'"iirriktrrr'°"r''' ^°"-- '"«
-dern and ChHst't ItdritiTe worldt^y' rl'^-f
mmmm
mmm
o..er' that" h^ ^a^^^r trh^r ^""^ ^"^ '"
11
.n.oduct.o„ o,- ,c,. own .v..a.o„ l.o, rafe\r /.^^
It is a mere truism that the unhappy Balkan Sf»t«
of n»t, that ,s of race and instinct, out of which they hive
also sometimes i? may'be .omthng le™" It"""' """f
Greek language, so much as the Gre "spirit 1"T '
quercd Romans and even Jews: and later a ' tL R '°""
sance, a^ain conquered Eilrope, and pr:hab v hclpe™""
^ome^measure d.rectly and indirectly t'o the discot^y ;"
12
*'■■ a grocer" s,,i,i ,1,.. French sro« r "" ^ ■""" ^"'i
for lus .oration. U .-ouulZ ,e J "I 7'"" "™ ''"'"'^d
of a ™an, '.born a n,a„ an 1 fed ! d, "'^ ^^"' '" ^^
«"d d,ed a lawvcr." n „;' !' '^ '' ''''""■■■ "r "born a man
^ -- and died a pro.Cs™ "' "^.^^ %-- '« say "born
ate was the worst of all: "he's e^h T , '""^ ""^ '^""
'^ly -■'-•■I. And the modern '.irifr ' °" '"'^'""*'"
oP'Kran, in a modern dress wh™ h °'"' '^"'''''•^ '^^'^
-ho can, do: tho.sc who a 't teach " , ■™?'"^ " """»«-•
'-tor, satirist has added he enroll' "^"'' =°'"''- ^^-"
cant teach, teach teaching" 17' "^■. '^"'' '^ose who
'^-o things, that of all Universif "f" f '* '^^""^ '° "ean
most difficult to turn to ' ? ^ faculties pedagogy is the
old liberal educat,-o„"„rthrArt:T"'- '"" '"^^ -™ ^e
"•■^h a ^■iew to teaching and as an h"'' ""^ « '^ 'aken
loses ,ts efficiency and its form " T"'°" '"^ ™^^'-^'.
-nspmng and uninspired teTeher " '^ ""' '""--^ °"'
professton was from the first the cV /"'' '''''*"'*^ '^eir
shortsighted eyes. ""^ '^'"''f P"2e before their
na2^2':?r tr°:;;s i ^ "^^"-'^ "^^ -^ *"«
which provoke these scoffs . ""^''^ " '^acher's life
" pan the speda, . is ^ofX^c 'T"'' "' '^ ■' -t
theones and doctrines and 1? continent for books and
«- of this eontinen from pedTT"'" ''^ ^P^^^' <>'---
-h.eh recommends these s"off to L"'"" '°°' '^""'"«-
Presumably this alienation fro™ t T'" """^ ^^"ada.'
a young country which has not T, """'^ '' '"^^''-We in
"ot.ce it in their Canadian eh^e """r"' «°™™esses
"ack m the learned atmosphere f/"*^ ^'^'^ themselves
of the pleasant Seine in ^1^ """' ""' ""= ''^"k^
an old book stall: nay, even ;m^5'rh Z"'' '"''" ^'^" -
.°f Great Britain. "Plea.se teachT'.''''"'*'"-^ ^""ure
■—a™ High school rt-uS^iS':;---
I
I
13
«=•>• "hether it is mer! awkl ,""'" """'''■"">-' "'■■^y
'he use of English, whch'l "'"'■" '■""" ■"''-■''-ence in
from Greek into smnTZ\"'- "V"' '" '""■■^'«<=
taken word by word b" " '' "'"* " ''"«'-'' -"ainlv
'«^ sense. I hardly hink i" ' ? f^""""' ^"'' «ill
"^e of EnKli.h.- it i rather I r '' ■""P^"«"^e '" the
-ore profound delusion .' ^or '7' ' T'" "^''P"^ ^'^
an unconscious and radii, JI "^'"' ^"'"'y- *' '^
and Romans meant no 1^^'"'"^'™ '"^^ ""^ «™ks
w-te "dotted nonsens'ul:'™/''^^ 'T" """ ^'-^
to us several parts and rans ate ration" V' ""^ '° '^'^'^
argument, for coherent ar^m n. ^' ""° ^ '^"'''^'•^"t
>t must have been wWtt'^ ' ""' "'=«'• 'here: why
order to exerdse the mrmrv^rrb"-'" ^"<^^<' ^•-' '"
generations and in order to dev ^ ^"^1: '^"''"'" '" '«<^^
art (.«„„„ /»>/,V,/J of np '■ '" ""™ ""■ nnhappy
art no doubt can most easilv^""""'^. ''^"''"dash.- wHch
memorising the eheape t and w" >"'T'' '^^ ''">•'"« -"d
Albanians and of their ace", kTn'f ir^h' „"' "" "'°''-"
>t has been said by Plato Ind n?^ ' "^ "'""'="'= '^'•'=«ks,
and therefore they possess the •'/ 7'^^' ^^""°' --"
Canadian children ^,a~5ea ed *? °'- r""^"^" «"'
and her beneficent comnln , "'"'°'" of Nature
'herefore rather than ,:Ttrr:^th''tT- ^"" ^^^''^ ^"'^
selves they will memorise some Th "^'"^ '°' "'™-
and ,f they are obscured ''7; "'her person's thoughts,
'hem at third hand in'btd tm T'" '""«"■•'«''• "■■'" '^^e
od days took the place of bool""!!,""-- """''^^ '" 'he
of thought, a much uorse u^o i p"' "V^'^" "'^ P'^»
more humiliating to an examiner t^ , "^"""''^'ions are
his own phrases served ,m r.,' ""■'" '''S^'" ''n IVIay
eooked, undigested „lL°ff'"">- '« him, raw. un-
'h;- ver.v acme of hun^i a " ''t^tn T'^''^''- ^-^ i' is
taken down wrong, or h■,^■c V' n ■, "^ ""''^^ have been
" hecome .lleg,ble, and reappear
14
with just the wrong word added and iust the rJ^ht
m.ssinK, so that they can no longer be either ^^^ """^
but are sin^ply n,eaningles.s Jb^rish L uninTerKf'
and n,uch less musical than th^ twitterings of the b''^
For education after all .t r,^i„ ,u ,. ^"-
r:^^::nti;i:tn:::^---[-oS
forces an intelligent reader to thinkand to think hTd'
and to think logically in the act of transuln " A > « '
to find out what he wanted to say is a real effort nflfr
for the sake of Tn°,h ' ^4 "'■'" '"^''^ '''^ examination
and ladt \I ^"^ Knowledge-he who reads freely
and s.adly, without thinking of examination-shall sa-e
his examination," we should ,,^, ... . , ™
snouid not as a nation dislike and
IS
distrust books so much as we d,,, for we should be less
obsessed wuh eKa„,inations an<l vocations and sL
matcna and commercial preoccupations: and we sh"u W
gradually acquire-preposterous, extravagant chimerical
young and old I have heard of a youthful student o
"y College m Oxford who was scandalized to heir h^
i-oetry I cal that playing >t pretty low," he said
That conventional reverence for the oast th=t f.i j '
unrntelligent separauon of the age! ^f^fhe t'c tan""of
°pirit'':hr ',t' ""]' '"^" °' ^""t"-' '"" - 'hrvery
-ptnt which ultimalel, destroys or obscures Aristotle's
nght to be heard on Poetry or anv other subject That
youthfu student in Oxford was of the same mental stuff
and make-up as the anatomist in Venice .n^he lldl
ages, who said that really if he could only believe his ye
he wou^d suppose from his autopsies that fhe nerves cenTred
ventional deference to AristotlHas p „ ucef in^"^:^;
by natural reaction the equally false and now t "day the
equally conventional indifference to Aristotle wh ch be.an
he^had only known ,t, was an English Aristotle and a v -rv
cong mal sp.nt, in reality, with the Bacon of Str^'irus ^
a fu, . ' Jhls reason only, that education can develop
a ful m,nd an,l w.de interests and so give a m.n a hJd
on hfe still when other holds have slipped om him and
fa, edT if ""'?• " Z'' ''■• ''"^ '■'""' '° "-hing an" h^s
a «i, ,f ,t were for th.s cause only, a University justifies
16
Lite IS a tragedy tu timse wh» fuel -said the Enriish
cnt.c-a comedy to those who think. If it be only then
to preserve the capaeity for seeing the romedv and the
humours of hfe, if it be only to distract attention from it,
traKedy-especially from the personal an,l individual side
of that traKcdy-the thoughtfulness of the educated
man, of Anstotle or Sir Francis, justifies itself. It would
have Rone hard with Sir Francis especially if he had been
enRrocse,! wuh the personal tragedy of his own career
But Cod forbid -I hear a voice sayins-God forbid that
the Umversny should turn out academic satirists and scoffers
and eome,hans who sec only the vanities and absurdities
of human nature and ambition, and only laugh at human
effort, should turn out academic cynics, such as are to
mark the atter days of this strayed planet-according to
the Prophet of the Epistle to Timothy-men without
natural affection, who have no feelings left to be touched
with mans mfirmity and Hfe's tragedy: men without a
pwitoph:;: "' ' ''"■'■•' """'"' ^ "'''^°^- ^-' '-«»-«
rDn't be alarmed, gentlemen, the prophecy in the Epistle
to Lmothy (II. 3, 3) is a warning meant for those who
<)n;:v thmk and nez-er feel. It concerns only those who
l.ve their whole hves in the University atmosphere, who are
not birds of passage there as you are. Let the Professors
look to themselves. It is to them that warning is addressed
And they were warned long before in words hardly less
sigmfieant by the prophet of ancient Greece. "It is an
awful thmg, Socrates," says Callicles in Plato's Gorgias
for a man to live his whole life in a Universitv. He spends
his days whispering in a corner of life's banquet hall with
a handful of immature boys and giris and he misses all
that makes hfe hfe: the market-place and banks and law
courts, the language which man speaks to man, the thoughts
which live men think. Education is a splendid discipHne
but a lamentable vocation; it plays the mischief with a
man who hnger.s there too long." Let the Professors I
repeat, see to this. I am speaking not to them-they are
17
a ncRlipble quamity-but to the ordinary student of
what the University ran do for ;„„, and her. He is in' no
danKer, still less is she, . f seeing eomcdy only, and of turn-
inK life into a satirist's jest: he is sure to find tragedy as
-ell as comedy, si.le by si.le. and probably even, like Socrates
at the Athenian dinner table, v.hen the dull dawn was
breaking and the rest of the companv were under the table
or too sleepy to understand him. he will expect to find
them-unlike the practice of the dramatists of Athens
but like the practice of Shakespeare- within the limits of
the same drama and within the covers of the same book-
at any rate he will find them bound up together in the same
single volume of his own life.
Education-says Aristotle, to return from .nis digression
—is the rattle of youth: it amuses youth, that is, and keeps
It out of mischief, even as the infant's rattle helps to kill
time for the infant amid the ennui of his nursery It is
the rattle of youth, and the anodvr.e of maturity and uge
and this quite apart from the fact, which another Greek
sophist and professor has elaborated, that education also
inadentally provides an honest living-bread and some-
times a taste of cheese-for the teacher or lecturer himself
that IS for a peculiarly inoffensive and unobstrusive set of
persons, who otherwise might go without either, not being
very practical.
This may seem a somewhat low or even grovelling point
of view whici; Aristotle and Isocrates, with characteristic
Greek mciosis oi litotes or irony, have set forth in defence
of their profession. If it seem so, Aristotle is prepared to
strike a louder note. When people talk, he says of
setthng hfe's problems by providing for every man three
acres and a cow, or three square meals a day, they miss
the ultmiate problem (though three acres and a cow would
settle the immediate political and industrial problems)
Life IS not made insoluble only by the struggle for bread
Arrange for the bread and you will find some m»" ■> uand-
ing cheese or even ch impagne: arrange even for these exact-
ing spirits and still the problem is not solved. There are
18
ambitions still more soarinR: there are cxactinR minds no
less than bodies. There are soldiers and demajrogucs and
millionaires: minds which demand |H>wer, leadership,
conquest, world-domination or downfall — like the mind
of my pupil Alexar der {one may overhear Aristotle saying
sotto voce), and for ambitions of the Alexandrian type,
there is one anil only one recipe-- education. Here is the
cheap and chief defence of nations. (Aristotle as a Greek
naturally finds his cheap and chief defence of nations in
intellect rather than character.) Let such a man plunge
into a library or a University, into the world of thought.
Here he will find worlds to be conquered, which are re-
newed as fast as conquered, which never will be conquered
all of them, or nearly all: which leave behind no feeling of
disgust and satiety when conquered, only the thirst for new
worlds to conquer. And most of all and best of all here
is a field where the conqueror injures no one, interferes
with no one by his conquests, but benefits rather his com-
munity and his age both positively by serving it, and
negatively by avoiding politics and public life and that
glamour of leadership which turns a man's ambitions into
dangerous channels. He that looks at public life as a
necessary evil, even w.ien he patriotically participates for
the State's sake in it; he that has an ambition behind these
things and above them, an ambition which retains his
first Icve and his best thoughts — one is almost bound to
think of Mr. Gladstone or of Mr. Balfour— the ambition
to think and know, he alone is the man in whom first rate
powers of mind and soaring ambitions injure no one, nor
even disgust and ■''sillusion himself.
The real remei ■ for life's troubles is neither bread nor
champagne, but Jniversities.
I have expand d Aristotle of course a little, but in any
case it is only an echo from Plato and an anticipation of
Pascal. "The worst evils of Ufe arise," says the Freneh-
mjn, " because men caimot sit still in a room and be
happy": but they can perhaps be happy if the room be a
library or a laboratory, or better still, be one of nature's
19
libraries and laboratorit's, u ini)unlain rafiRC fur the tifolonist
and mineralogist, a flower Kanlen or a western prairie for
the botanist. Aristotle was at heart, in spite of all hii
studies in history, politics, ethics, philosophy and poetry,
even in a Krciitcr <UKree a student of natural hi.tory and
natural science an<l a collector: thounh he certainly never
exalts tiiesc sdences and contrasts them with the human-
ities in our later, narrower and meaner fashion. He was
nearir in temperament to Oliver Wendell Holmes, poet,
phy^' lan and moralist, than to our lopsided specialists.
'1 IS is what University education can help a man to do
for himself. A University is not a religion, a church or a
home. It can not often do the best thinj;s, create character
by influence and example. It is only a Greek sort of church,
or a Greek sort of religion: th. Greek church in the sense
of the church of pagan Greece: the church of the cultiva-
tion of the intelligence: i church in which all moral terms
are t.ikcn up and translated into intelligence and are ex-
pressive of thought, instead of expressive of will and
characier— "dear head" the Greeks said when we say
"dear heart." The good man in a University class is what
the good man was • i Thucydides often, and to Plato
generally, the man of mtellect or scholarship, or the shrew-...
est wit, or the b st speaker, or even the best manipulator
of men, the best statesman or the cleverest coiner of catch
words, the happiest phrase-maker, the smartest politician.
You won't find the word "good" often used in University
circles in its merely ordinary or moral sense, of the will
and character, to denote the most honest man or the most
charitable, or the most temperate, or the most humble:
least of all, the most humble. But if the University gives
this specially ancient and Pagan sense to the word "good,"
if "goodness" means excellence of mind, superiority of
intellect or of force, rather than the acquired virtues of
the will, which are called "good" in our private life and in
our churches, if the University is a Pagan church and not
identical with the Christian church, if it even conspicuously
falls short at times in developing such very recent and
ao
Chrisiian vinucs ^i'' humility (wliiih was to th,' Orcoks
part (i( thi' (idsiKMs f(K)lishnt's»). nivorthclcss, cfn'''"""'".
the CniviTsity (l<x'S much for the man himst'lf and for the
State, which no other orjjaniziitum not even the home
or the churches can do.
Hut to come nearer home and to run from education in
);eneral to this I'nivcrsity in particular, you have some
a(lvanta>;es in the West here and in SuskatiKin and Eiim<m-
ton which we miss muih in Toronto. Your Faculty of
•riculture is in much closer connectir)n with the other
iilties; that means much for you. The Faculty of
Agriculture K'ves this University opportunities of ori^final
researc^^ which are not possessed by the Universities of
Ontario in the same de^;rce. Students who desire to pro-
secute original research in other departments will iwrhaps
naturally no East; but those who are satisfied to pursue it
in AKriculture can do it in close touch with the University;
and after all, AKriculture is the Faculty in which original
research lor Canadians is most natural and most beneficent.
You can do here in your own University the same sort
of work done in Ottawa ind in Guelph, the work by which
the Exp'-rimental Farm and the Agricultural College have
earned a reputation for Canada all over the continent and
lieyond ii and whereby the wheat area of the Dominion
— the chii ; commercial asset of the Dominion — is being
constantly extended. Until Canadians showed what they
could do at St. Julien, their agricultural colleges were their
only title to fame in European eyes.
Original research in some subjects is something of a
superstition and a delusion, but in this department it is
unmixed .,'ood. For in the new and natural sciences and
in medicine, and most of all in the Canadian Science, in
the Science of Agriculture, there is a virgin land in every
sense, literal and metaphorical, to be explored, in explora-
tions equally interesting to the explorer and beneficial to
his country. U is an advantage to you to hav? this bene-
ficent Facult>' so closely allied to your University. The
evils of Industrialism amd Commercialism lie heavy on
31
the old world already, and I'vcn arc bcKinninK to lie heavy
on young Canada. One tif the few antidotes and palliatives
— he easiest and most obvious — to these evils, lies in a
return to the linid, in the resumption, I had almost s.iid.
of man's only lawful occupation. It is one of the con-
spicuous advantages of this Vnivcrsity that you can hardly
shut your eyes as we are tempted to do in Toronto to the
Faculty of Auriculture
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